Happy 1st Birthday, Sarah! - Jonathan Pryor's web log

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Happy 1st Birthday, Sarah!

Sarah is 1 year old today. She's grown up so much.

In particular, her mental and language skills have improved, more than we realized. She's been babbling away for months now, but as far as we can tell she hasn't said a "word" yet, as word connotes meaning, "The...conception [of] an idea," and as far as we could tell she hasn't said anything with any actual meaning behind it. (We realize that we're probably being too literal here.)

So yesterday, we were lamenting that she hasn't said her first word yet (as we have a sticker book for those sorts of things), when we wondered if she was understanding us yet. She should be, as I've read that babies start understanding language at 10 months, but we haven't seen much evidence of that. Such evidence was provided, when Amber said "goodbye" to Sarah, hoping that Sarah would say something in response.

Realize that I've been saying "goodbye" to Sarah every morning for the past several weeks/months as I left for work. Amber has never said this to Sarah before (that I'm aware of), and is generally always around.

Upon hearing "goodbye" from Amber, Sarah broke down and started crying, half hyperventilating. She knew what "goodbye" meant, even if she couldn't say it, even if she couldn't say any words (by our probably-too-strict definition), she knew what it meant regardless, and the mere idea that Amber would leave... That was more than enough reason to break down and cry. It took us over 10 minutes of cradling and a walk to calm her down again, she was really unhappy.

So we learned something yesterday. We learned that she's learning English as well as we could hope for, and that she really loves Amber.

Sarah also had her first piece of Chocolate Cake for her birthday "party." She was...unimpressed. She ate it, with the same level of enthusiasm she shows when eating everything else (i.e. not much).

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